School faces £11k shortfall after DfE funding error

A High Wycombe primary school is facing an £11,000 shortfall after the Department for Education admitted it miscalculated its funding figures for 2024-25.

Great Kingshill Church Of England Combined School headteacher Suzanne Best said she may now have to freeze recruitment after the Government’s £370m error in its overall budget for schools in England.

She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “Budgets are already set, so it is going to make it interesting. At Great Kingshill we try and balance the books and have a bit for contingency.

“But if the money we get isn’t as much as we thought, it has the potential to put us into deficit. It might mean that we have to put resources elsewhere.”

Great Kingshill, in Cryers Hill, is one of thousands of mainstream schools across England affected by the DfE error, which means budgets will be at least £50 less per pupil less than originally planned for.

A planned increase of 2.7 per cent increase per pupil in England in 2024/25 has been brought down to 1.9 per cent.

The Government has ordered an inquiry into the mistake and the DfE has apologised, following the announcement on Friday.

However, the bungled figures have plunged schools into uncertainty, according to Mrs Best, who has been a teacher for 20 years and a headteacher at different schools for 11 years.

She said: “It’s the uncertainty. You try and be prudent, plan to the best of your ability. Sometimes people get sick, people get pregnant. Life happens.

“We are an academy. Our financial year has already started. It’s a bit late in the day for this. I wouldn’t cut back on staff. I would just put a pause on recruitment. The staff I have here, I need everybody I have now.

“We would look at ways to generate additional income. I would not go out and ask parents, it is hard enough as it is now.”

Mrs Best said her staff salary bill rose by £90,000 last year, despite the school of about 440 pupils employing 10 fewer people than it did five years ago.

The headteacher added that her estimated £11,000 funding shortfall would compound the impacts of the cost of living crisis on Great Kingshill, which also spends a significant amount on the upkeep of its Victorian and 1960s buildings.

She said: “It’s down to the stage where every penny counts. Every time someone asks me for something I have to think, ‘Do we really need it?’

“We are an old building. The upkeep of the site cost a lot of money. The maintenance becomes nice to have rather than an essential. I have to pay my staff and energy bills.

“In life everything has gone up, ground maintenance has gone up, cleaners have to charge more. Every time you buy reams of paper, they are more expensive than the last lot of paper you bought. It is those kinds of things. There isn’t the flex in the system to absorb all of that.”